Understanding American Icons

An Introduction to Semiotics

Arthur Asa Berger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315416199
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Studi sulla comunicazione

This brief, student-friendly introduction to the study of semiotics uses examples from 25 iconic locations in the United States. From Coney Island to Las Vegas, the World Trade Center to the Grand Canyon, Berger shows how semiotics offers a different lens in understanding locations taken for granted in American culture. He recasts Disneyland according to Freud, channels the Mall of America through Baudrilliard, and sees Mount Rushmore through the lens of Gramsci. A seasoned author of student texts, Berger offers an entertaining, non-threatening way to teach theory to undergraduates and that will fit ideally in classes on cultural studies, American studies, social theory, and tourism.

Chapter 1

Icons and Semiotics: An Introduction

It seems a strange thing, when one comes to ponder over it, that a sign should leave its interpreter to supply part of its meaning; but the explanation of the phenomenon lies in the fact that the entire universe—not merely the universe of existents, but all that wider universe, embracing the universe of existents, as a part, the universe which we are all accustomed to refer to as “the truth ”—that all this universe is perfused with signs, if it not composed exclusively of signs.

C.S. Peirce, in T. Sebeok, A Perfusion of Signs

The basic unit of semiotics is the sign defined conceptually as something that stands for something else, and, more technically, as a spoken or written word, a drawn figure, or a material object unified in the mind with a particular cultural concept. The sign is this unity of word-object, known as a signifier with a corresponding, culturally prescribed content or meaning, known as a signified. Thus our minds attach the word “dog,” or the drawn figure of a “dog,” as a signifier to the idea of a “dog,” that is, a domesticated canine species possessing certain behavioral characteristics. If we came from a culture that did not possess dogs in daily life, however unlikely, we would not know what the signifier “dog” means.… When dealing with objects that are signifiers of certain concepts, cultural meanings, or ideologies of belief, we can consider them not only as “signs,” but sign vehicles. Signifying objects carry meanings with them.

Mark Gottdiener, The Theming of America:

Dreams, Visions and Commercial Spaces

“This company is about icons.”

That’s how Patricio de Marco, the chief executive officer of Gucci, described the brand in an article about him in the Wall Street Journal. And most of the chief executives of upscale brands would say the same thing about their brands and their iconic logos. What they mean by describing their brands as iconic is that they are distinctive and known for being beautifully designed, well made and expensive. Gucci products can be identified by the Gucci logo—a mark that distinguishes Gucci products from other brands with which it competes.

The term icon is used by semioticians to stand for something that generates meaning by resemblance. Semiotics can be described as the science of signs—a sign being anything that can be used to stand for something else. A word is a sign; thus the word “tree” stands for a large leafy plant. Facial expressions are also signs. So are hairstyles, eyeglasses, clothes, body language, and just about everything else you can think of.

C.S. Peirce, one of the founding fathers of semiotics, believed that everything is a sign and once wrote that “the universe is perfused with signs, if not made up entirely of them. He explained that there are three kinds of signs: Icons, Indexes and Symbols:

Every sign is determined by its object, either first, by partaking in the characters of the object, when I call a sign an Icon; secondly, by being really and in its individual existence connected with the individual object, when I call the sign an Index； thirdly, by more or less certainty that it will be interpreted as denoting the object, in consequence of a habit (which term I use as including a natural disposition), when I call the sign a Symbol. (In Sebeok 1976: 36)

We can see how these three kinds of signs work in the table below:

Table 1.1 Peirce’s Three Kinds of Signs

Icon	Index	Symbol
Resemblance	Relationships	Learned Meaning
Photograph	Smoke and Fire	Cross, Star of David, Crescent

A sign, Peirce explained, represents something to someone. There is always someone interpreting what the sign means. Icons, for Peirce, communicate meaning by resembling something. Thus, a photograph resembles a person. Indexes communicate meaning by relationships, such as smoke that generally indicates fire. We have to learn the meaning of symbols. Many of the “icons” of fashion designers are really symbols (technically, a form of symbol called a logo), since the only way we can know what they stand for is by learning about them from advertising, generally speaking, and it is the symbolic meaning of many of the places and buildings I deal with that is what is most important.

The term “iconicity” has been modified in popular usage in recent years and now stands for some kind of exemplary and culturally significant place or thing. And in some cases, we use the term “icon” to refer to a person—a famous politician or performer of some kind. Technically, the word icon comes from the Greek eikôn which means image or likeness. In Greek and Russian Orthodox churches there are many beautiful painted icons of saints and other important religious figures.

When I was in high school, in the eleventh grade, one of my teachers called me an “iconoclast,” which means, literally speaking, a breaker of icons and idols. In other words, my teacher meant that I was a nonconformist in my thinking. In a sense, much of my career as a scholar and writer has involved “breaking” idols—taking them apart or deconstructing their hidden meanings and considering their psychological, sociological, political and cultural impact. The approach that uses these disciplines is known as cultural studies—a kind of analysis that uses concepts from a variety of disciplines to understand the significance of whatever is being investigated.

In this book I will be interpreting the social and cultural significance of some of the most important iconic places, structures, and buildings in the United States, and, in many cases, using these icons for a discussion of topics related to their symbolic meaning. One of the more outstanding examples of analyzing icons is found in the French semiotician Roland Barthes’s books Mythologies and The Eiffel Tower and Oth...